YouTube Webcast Announced for Arcade Fire @ Madison Square Garden

In case you missed the news earlier this week, Arcade Fire announced that they would be offering a streaming webcast from their Madison Square Garden concert on August 5th via YouTube. I’ll be dancing it up at Phish at the Greek in Berkeley, so I’ll only get to catch the highlights later as they get archived. With the band’s upcoming release, The Suburbs, set to drop that week (even though the album has already leaked), we’ll likely see a rejuvenated, matured and ready-for-the-road band given how much time they’ve had off. Plus, they’re already started warming up and playing shows and this will come after plenty of time to work out any show jitters or mishaps. I’m excited to see how it comes out.

And further, it’s nice to see YouTube continue to push to innovate in this space given that the platform and model for video consumption has long been ingrained in anyone that frequents any social network online these days. People know how to share YouTube videos. It’s a familiar product. And opening up such a familiar, mainstream platform to the world of live concert streaming is a wonderful thing for all of us fans. NewTeeVee.com reports that we’ll see a bunch of these coming soon….

Vevo and YouTube will be pushing deeper into the live music scene with a five-part concert series that will be streamed live online. The new “Unstaged” live music series will host performances from major artists like John Legend and the Roots, and will have interactive features, like being able to switch camera angles and vote on encore performances at the show.

Hello, music lover, meet “Unstaged,” a new five-part concert series brought to you by YouTube, American Express and VEVO. Each performance will not only be streamed live on YouTube, but it will also have unique on- and offline components to entertain fans — for example, you may be able to vote on the encore performance or switch camera angles. And if you miss anything, no worries: the full show and highlights will be available on the artist’s channel soon after the show.

Sick, right? Now where’s our official Phish webcast for the Greek run? Given how unique the Telluride shows are and how ridiculously sold-out they are, couldn’t this be something that the rest of the Phish audience can enjoy on the web? The band and any partner courting them are really shitting the bed on this one. More on this one early next week; we’ve been dying to unleash an updated and proper rant to our original post on why Phish needs to start webcasting their shows. I really wish I could pay for a high quality Telluride webcast. Like, a lot.